3. Create & fund a California scientific research institute to ensure we fund science research even if the federal government continues to pull back (SB 895)
4. Ensure California’s ICE mask ban, which I passed last year, is fully enforceable (SB 1004)
Excited to share Sampleworks led by @karsonchrispens.bsky.social with @diffuseproject.bsky.social. It's a modular framework connecting structure predictors to experimental data and guidance methods. Swap predictors or guidance methods. All open and made to be built upon. t.co/fvNHH3gfVu
That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...
Maybe science organizations don’t want to play outside game. FINE. 1. Apologize to your people for not responding well & 2. Support some activists who are doing the dirty work you can’t be bothered to do.
Not a SINGLE science org or society has donated to @standupforscience.bsky.social
If I were a blue state governor, I’d be looking into adding a bunch of tenure lines at my state schools.
I know that seems like “kick ‘em when they’re down,” but it’s more like “let academics who can escape to where they can do real work.”
Builds up your own schools AND protect US academic output.
Get in, dorks. We're ready for round two.
RALLY TO TAKE BACK SCIENCE! 🔬🧪✊
March 7th, 2026 in Washington, DC
Learn more at www.standupforscience.net/ma... (link in our bio.)
Our paper is (finally) out in Cell today!
CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal principles of tau proteostasis
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Great collaborative effort - read more from first author @asamelson.bsky.social below:
We also show that acute generation of reactive oxygen species causes changes to proteasome function and that generate disease-associated tau proteolytic fragments.
We find that the CRL5-SOCS4 complex ubiquitinates tau in cells and in vitro and that the expression of CUL5 and many CUL5 binding partners are correlated with resilience to cell death in human tauopathies.
We used tau conformation-specific antibodies to perform a genome wide CRISPRi screen in iPSC-derived neurons with the disease-causing Tau V337M mutation. We found ~1000 hits. We retested those hits in 6 more screens. CUL5, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, was the top hit. ETC genes were also enriched.
I'm really proud of this paper and very grateful to all the coauthors. Especially for @kampmann.bsky.social's mentorship and guidance during my postdoc and continuing as junior faculty. Thank you!!
After a long review process, I'm excited that our paper is finally in print: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
TL;DR: We use CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons to find a new tau E3 ligase and a relationship between oxidative stress, the proteasome, and tau proteolytic fragments.
More below 👇
Lab tours. Live demos. Real talk with scientists. Students from South Gate High School got an inside look at UCLA's breakthrough research in medicine and disease treatment. Their curiosity and questions brought so much energy to our labs! 🔬🧬🧫
LISTEN UP, DORKS!
@standupforscience.bsky.social is getting (even more!) political. People often say "well what can one person do??"
🥊 If all our followers joined Science Fight Club and gave $5 a month, we could save science!
🥊Join here: www.standupforscience.net/join-science...
SHARE WIDELY!
Thank you Alzforum for featuring our new preprint identifying regulators of disease states of #microglia.
Project led by Amanda McQuade, computation by Reet Mishra, collaboration with the Nunez and De Jager labs.
Alzforum
www.alzforum.org/news/researc...
Preprint
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
MAHA action flyer for 10/1
The action hour agenda.
On Sept 17th, 2025, @aaas.org and @researchamerica.bsky.social hosted Jay Bhattacharya—NIH Director—as the keynote for the National Health Research Forum.
Less than two weeks later, he spoke at the MAHA Action hour alongside Oz, Russel Brand, Tony Lyons, and Callie Means.
I have a call to action:
🎀 New from the lab 🎀 We used the SPARK design for kinase biosensors to develop a PINK1 biosensor, PINK1-SPARK. We used PINK1-SPARK to measure PINK1 activity in multiple cell types & when using HaloTag, for multiplexing! Plasmids coming soon, check out the preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Researchers at UCLA built mini models of human lungs, hearts and brains to study hantaviruses and identify potential therapies. With no current treatments, these deadly rodent-borne viruses pose a serious threat to public health. #ResearchPowersProgress
stemcell.ucla.edu/news/ucla-sc...
Los Angeles rents are high, especially compared to the average pay - but it wasn't always that way.
In this video, LA Councilmember Nithya Raman goes over the history of why LA stopped building enough housing relative to the number of new jobs, and how the city can reverse that trend. 🏠🏠🏠
Excited that the paper presenting our mouse brain in vivo CRISPR screening platform is out today in @natneuro.nature.com!
Great team effort, led by Biswa Ramani and @ivlrose.bsky.social in the Kampmann lab.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2 bits of data from new Economist/YouGov poll.....
13% support for cutting research funding to universities. 24% among Republicans. Polling on this continues to be catastrophic for the Rs, suggests Dems should be learning far harder into standing up for science and our universities. 1/
“Los Angeles leaders are once again demonstrating their cowardice and failing their own constituents who desperately need more housing—and they’re doing it at the behest of LA’s wealthiest, most entitled voters, who have consistently blocked progress on housing affordability.” - @hanlon.bsky.social
In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, UCLA scientists have shown it’s possible to reprogram a patient’s own stem cells to create a continuous supply of functional T cells, the immune system’s most powerful cancer-killing agents. bit.ly/4fhvMnv
#CancerResearch #StemCellResearch
I'm thrilled to announce my next career step-- I’m joining Genentech as a Principal Scientist & Lab Head in Discovery Oncology!
I’ll be hunting new ways to target cancers using my background in disordered nuclear proteins.
the republican party is a modern day Slave Power and the only way forward for this country is to sweep it into the ash heap of history
UCLA-led team has received a $3.5 million grant from the NIH to study and develop treatments for the infectious disease #mpox. Their discoveries could help prevent the next global outbreak. ➡️ bit.ly/3TW38hI
These people, the gleeful goons, the giddy race scientists, the cheerleaders of misery, the “America for Americans only” demagogues—they don’t believe in this country. They never have, no matter how brazenly they’ll wrap themselves in the flag to justify their actions. The country they believe is small and cruel. It’s a country where secret police demand to see papers, where neighbors turn on neighbors, where the state is the enemy of the people rather than the embodiment of their collective will. It’s a place governed by fear and by hate, but even more so by doubt—doubt that any country could possibly be big enough to contain multitudes. Doubt that any country could be strong enough to take the unrealized dreams of the rest of the world and make them possible. Doubt that any country could be resilient enough to face hardship head-on and keep marching toward those ideals put to parchment by imperfect men two and a half centuries ago. They don’t believe in America, and no matter how tightly they grip the reins of government right now, America doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to the people who do believe in it, whether they came over on the Mayflower or through Ellis Island, in business class or on foot, “the right way” or not. Heck, maybe they were here long before anyone who looked like me showed up. It belongs to people who believe in those ideals that we’ve strove towards but never quite lived up to, people who believe that we should keep striving anyways because that arc of the universe isn’t going to bend itself. It belongs to people willing to do the work, willing to stand up for their communities, and willing to take to their streets to stand up for those unmet ideals. It belongs to people who can still see the promise of this place in their mind and want more than anything to be a part of it, even if they have to cross an ocean or a desert to do so.
Logging off for the weekend, but shouting it one more time before I do: they don't believe in America.
actioncookbook.substack.com/p/america-be...
Once again, this is a massive public jobs program for fascists.
This bill was never just about tax cuts and gutting social services. It's about investing our collective resources in violence and using state power to spread fear and destroy solidarity. We need to resist this with all we've got.
